Lighting a flame, 2025, Acrylic on raw canvas, 17.9 × 23.9 in

©Naomi Okubo, courtesy Fou Gallery

Canary Cave, 2025, Acrylic on raw canvas, 38.2 × 51.3 in

©Naomi Okubo, courtesy Fou Gallery

Bird Collector, 2025, Acrylic on raw canvas, 57.1 × 44.1 in

©Naomi Okubo, courtesy Fou Gallery

Dancing in the flames, 2025, Acrylic on raw canvas, 28.1 × 12.4 in

©Naomi Okubo, courtesy Fou Gallery

Installation view of Naomi Okubo: Resonance on a Surface, 2025

Photo Credit: Ken Lee
Courtesy of Fou Gallery

memory/

My family is a major influence on my work. My father was born in Yokohama in 1920 and was already 65 years old when I was born. Since my grandfather worked at the Swiss Embassy in Yokohama, my father was exposed to Western culture which was banned in Japan as “enemy culture” during the war. After the war, he wanted to learn English, so he worked at a U.S. military base in Yokohama. Later, he founded one of Japan’s earliest software companies and traveled over a hundred times to the U.S, so I had the opportunity to visit the States from a young age.

My mother, on the other hand, was born in a rural area of Japan and raised in a very patriarchal environment. Even though she was smart and capable, only her older brother was allowed to attend university. In her twenties, she moved to Tokyo and started working as an artist, but she gave up her practice after I was born.

After my father passed away in 2007, my mother became emotionally dependent on me and increasingly over-involved in my life. I think part of that came from her projecting her own unfulfilled dreams onto me. She had lived in a time when it was difficult for women to establish careers or independence, so I think there was a strong sense of jealousy in watching me attend university freely and pursue a life as an artist in ways she couldn’t. Eventually, I had to distance myself from this toxic relationship in order to protect my own mental and emotional well-being.

These personal experiences, especially the contrasts between admiration and restriction or freedom and control, have deeply shaped my work. The longing for the West that both of my parents strongly felt often appears in my imagery.

The artist’s studio.

Courtesy of the artist.

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The influence of my family, especially my mother, extends into the physical act of making. Garment-making has become a crucial part of my practice. It started as a hobby, but in recent years, I started making all of the dresses that appear in my paintings. My mother taught me how to sew when I was a child, and since she grew up in a patriarchal family, she naturally believed it was important for girls to learn domestic work. I genuinely love to cook and sew, but after becoming an adult and learning more about the history of women and the roles imposed on them by society, I started to recognize a greater tension in this part of my practice.

I have always cared about the texture and pattern in painting, and making garments naturally became part of my practice. I collect beautiful fabrics and hand-painted kimonos, particularly with patterns influenced by different cultures such as India, and deconstruct them for my garments. Some of my prominent inspirations are Èdouard Vuillard and Henri Matisse for their use of patterns–patterned dresses on patterned backgrounds–which I find visually interesting.

In Japanese society, people care a lot about how they harmonize with others. When I was a teenager, if I wore something bright or patterned, I drew attention from strangers for standing out too much. But if the background is also patterned, then the figure can blend in. That’s something I find really interesting: using patterns both to stand out and to disappear. That motivated me to use many patterns in my work. It’s a kind of camouflage—to be visible and invisible at the same time.

The artist’s studio.

Courtesy of the artist.

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My creative process usually starts with rough sketches or written notes. I don’t begin with research. Instead, I first visualize an image or composition in my mind. From there, I start sketching, and if I need to, I’ll do some research along the way. After that, I gather reference images from different sources like the internet or magazines, and take self-portraits to fit the scene I have in mind. Then, I create a digital collage using Photoshop as the draft image. At that point, I decide everything, including color, so the collage ends up looking very close to the final painting. I project that image onto the canvas and paint the entire piece by hand.

One of the unique technical aspects of my work is that I use raw canvas. For example, when I paint fabric or wallpaper patterns, I apply acrylic paint directly to the unprimed canvas. The pigment soaks into the fabric, creating a flattened, matte surface. After the first layer, I seal the canvas with a transparent medium and continue painting. In other sections, I apply gesso or modeling paste to create more layered, textured surfaces.

My painting style is quite far from traditional Japanese painting, particularly because traditional Japanese painting employs a lot of negative space. However, I’m really interested in Akita ranga, an Edo period painting genre that was influenced by Western painting and technique, such as linear perspective and chiaroscuro. In the Meiji period, Japan emulated Western countries and launched its own colonial projects in China, Korea, and Taiwan. This affected Japan’s visual culture, and even the former Crown Prince’s residence was constructed in a Neo-Baroque style through the combined efforts of Japan’s architecture, art, and craft communities. My paintings are rooted in this particular aesthetic contrast between traditional Japan and the West and cultural cross-pollination.

The motifs I use in my work, like birds, butterflies, and fish, are joined together by the idea of enclosure and capture. These motifs express the human desire to gather, collect, and understand everything. It connects to a colonial impulse. Recently, I’ve been using motifs like botanical gardens and enclosed spaces as metaphors for my ideas of home and family.

I also find the history of the greenhouse fascinating. Greenhouses originated from the Wardian case: a sealed, self-sustaining environment containing soil, plants, and insects. These cases allowed the British Empire to transport plants from around the world, while the glass greenhouses provided isolated, clean ecosystems separate from smog-filled London.

This history offers a glimpse into human nature and shows how easily people can ignore the real issues of the world and find comfort in small, enclosed spaces. I also portray these spaces as environments that not only isolate people from external realities, but in doing so, encourage them to stay—to remain passive—rather than confront what lies beyond the walls.

Image courtesy of the artist.

Written and interviewed by Gabrielle Luu.

Gabrielle Luu is a writer based in Brooklyn, NY and the Editor-in-Chief of Civil Art.

Published July 14, 2025.

Courtesy of the artist.

Naomi Okubo

Naomi Okubo (b. 1985) is an artist based in Tokyo, Japan. She received an MFA from Musashino Art University in 2011.

Okubo’s work has continued to exhibit in Asia, Europe, and the U.S.A., including Fou Gallery, New York (2024/2025); GALLERY MoMo Ryogoku, Tokyo (2023); ELSA ART GALLERY, Taipei (2022); Yoshino Gypsum Art Foundation, Tokyo (2022); Residency Unlimited, New York (2019); Official Japanese Ambassador Residence, New York (2017); Czech Center Art Gallery, New York (2017); Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2009) and Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, Kyoto (2005). In 2024, she had her first solo exhibition in New York at Fou Gallery. She served as a residency artist at mh PROJECT, New York (2019); Residency Unlimited, New York (2017); Art Department of Halland Municipality, Sweden (2014). Okubo has undertaken commissioned work for prestigious publications such as Airbnb Magazine, DIE ZEIT, ARMUSELI, and ZEIT-magazine. Her work can also be found in such periodicals as Pen, Contemporary Art Curator Magazine, Financial Times, Juxtapoz Magazine, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Blanc Magazine. Her work is in the public collection of Hallands Konstmuseum (Sweden).